Lucia and the Unnamed

The subject of this painting by Pensabene, a painter of portraits and historical-literary genre painting, is taken from The Betrothed, the novel by Alessandro Manzoni. It describes a key episode of the novel: the Unnamed bursts into the poor house where Lucia is Don Rodrigo’s prisoner when the girl, crying and imploring, manages to rouse feelings of kindness in the heart of the infamous character of this remarkable literary plot.